


what good do prophets bring?

by SparkleMoose



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Curses, Galahd (Final Fantasy XV), Galahdian Culture (Final Fantasy XV), Gen, Madness but in the Sexy Greek Way, Seer Luche
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparkleMoose/pseuds/SparkleMoose
Summary: Time is fickle thing, fickle and twisting and it is easy for Clan Lazarus to tread the paths of the future, to See the different paths ahead of them. To look into the realm of possibility and know.Yet it is still a curse, and each curse has a price.(Luche has always been cold.)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36





	what good do prophets bring?

**Author's Note:**

> listen square gave me like jack shit when it came to most of these characters so they're mine now and i am doing what i want with them

I’m a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I  
not at home with the dead nor with the living

-anne carson, antigonick

* * *

Each Clan that lives in Galahd has a story. A story of how they came to the islands, of what their beads mean, of how they earned the Ramuh’s favor and were granted the lands they claim as their own. Each clan has a story, a history they can claim as their own. They do not hesitate to share this story, to tell others of the deeds of their ancestors and what their own skills are. The only Clans who do not speak of how they received Ramuh’s favor are Clan Lazarus and Clan Khara.

Clan Khara, the rumors state, earned their lands and beads when the head of the family slit the throat of a corrupt Lucian King. When asked about it, members of the clan merely smile, as though they are amused by the thought of someone thinking that a family of farmers and weavers could do such a thing.

Clan Lazarus is a different story, they do not stay silent as the Khara’s do. Rather it is as though there is something preventing them from speaking of what they had done to earn the right to stay on Galahd. For Galahd does not let foreigners tend her land lightly, she does not welcome those who seek to use her for their own ends. And Clan Lazarus was foreign once, the stories say, they had settled on the southern most island of Galahd and called it home. Those who set foot on that island come back speaking of the preternatural cold that digs into your bones. That lingers in you even after you’ve left the island.

Some think that Clan Lazarus is cursed and Clan Lazarus has never argued against it. Rather they seem to encourage that idea, the idea that they had been wronged by someone for doing what was right.

For why else would Ramuh let them settle on his islands, unless what Clan Lazarus fought for was just?

* * *

This is the truth; Clan Lazarus is cursed. This is also the truth; whether or not what they had done was just is a matter for debate by some. Is it just to wish to spare the lives of two innocents? Is it just to demand that the Astrals find another way to fix the mistakes they've made? 

Is it just to go against the Goddess you've pledged yourself to if you believe they are no longer in the right? Clan Lazarus had been a group of priests and priestesses once. They had knelt at the feet of the Ice Goddess Shiva and spread her teachings where they may.

They had believed the Astrals were right once, that they could do no wrong. But when a man dies at the hands of his brother, when a man is deemed a criminal for daring to help others what did the followers of Shiva do? Did they stand still? Did they let their Goddess dictate their path? Do they say nothing? Or did they ask for another way? Did they remember the man who came to them once when one of theirs was ill an cured him? Did they remember his tired smile as the children gathered around him and sang a song of thanks? Did they remember his laughter?

They did. Clan Lazarus remembered Ardyn Lucis Caelum in a way that was wiped from history. They remembered a man with a kind smile, a man who always offered to help when they needed it. Clan Lazarus remembered a kind man and could not stand to see that man being erased. 

Clan Lazarus had dared to ask a goddess why. They had demanded that fate be changed, that the millions of lives lost to the Scourge be saved, that the life of the man that had helped them be saved. They had demanded a happier ending and they had been cursed for it. For daring to demand a just ending to the story.

Some would consider this foresight a gift, they would consider the ability to walk the paths of the future a blessing and yet they do not account for the fact that some things mortal eyes are not meant to see. That the future is wealth of information, that looking too long can shatter even the most sturdy of minds. They do not account for the fact you can get lost on the paths ahead, that you can spend your entire life looking forward and forget the past and present. Clan Lazarus had fled to Galahd while half-sure they were already there. They had set foot on the islands with their minds tearing themselves apart.

Clan Lazarus is a tragedy, one that the majority of Galahd does not know of. They take advantage of the Auger of Seers that forsake the lands they were given and settle within or between their borders. They come to Clan Lazarus for advice and Clan Lazarus gives it, a repayment for letting them settle where they may.

Once a year, Clan Lazarus goes back to the land given to them by Ramuh, they go back and let the tension in their bodies ease out. They let their eyes become dark and dead and let themselves wander through the Storm of different paths unfolding before them. It is easier to find their way back to the present when others are with them, it is easier still to see the future of the path they are on when they pool their Sight together. It is the one time a year they do not worry as much about getting lost.

Luche has not been to a Gathering in a long time, he has no desire to go.

Not after the last one he went to ended so horribly.

* * *

No one in Clan Lazarus is spared this, this curse of Sight, of the unending glare of diverging paths. They are not spared the Sight of the future, of the children and lovers they may never have, of the deaths of all those they hold dear in their heart. The Sight is not kind, it is not a blessing and was never intended to be one no matter what others may say. It is a curse made to bend and break those inflicted with it. It is a curse that has not faded in the two thousand years since Shiva left them with the cold in their bones. The Sight sits with the Clan Lazarus in their grief, in their joy. It clings to them like a parasite and feeds on the fragile sanity they clutch to their chest as though they could lose it any second.

And they do. Each Lazarus goes mad in their own way, some wander too far down twisting, breaking paths that connect the future to the present and cannot tell the difference between a dead man and one still breathing. Others attempt to run, to try and find someway to rid themselves of the Sight and they fail.   
A Goddess’s curse is not easily broken. 

Others still simply fade into the Storm of possibility and take their body with them. Leaving behind nothing but the turquoise bead Ramuh had gifted Clan Lazarus when they came to Galahd for sanctuary. 

Such was the fate of Luche’s cousin Lyre, of the boy with amber eyes and messy brown hair. Luche remembers laughing with his cousin as the adults around them found each other on the diverging paths of the future and led one another further into the Storm with a sense of clarity they could not typically find. Luche remembers laughing with his cousin as they ignored the gravity of the curse placed on them, a mistake, Luche would think later; because Luche will never know what triggered it but Lyre had stopped. Luche’s cousin had stood stock still and Luche watched as life faded from Lyre’s eyes, as his skin grew pale and the cold in Lyre’s bones brought frost to Lyre’s blue finger tips.

“Lyre,” Luche had begged then, “Lyre come back.”

Lyre did not listen, he had stared at Luche seeing both the present and a possibility. Luche hadn’t known what to do then, and the other children had watched, silent and afraid as Luche tried to guide Lyre back to them. He had begged at first, pleaded with his cousin to come back even as tears gathered in his eyes. 

Then Luche had dared to try and find Lyre in the Storm of future possibilities. He never did find Lyre, and Luche’s father had to guide him back to the straight and narrow path that they call the present. Yet when Max had led Luche back to the present Lyre’s body was already fading. Brilliant flecks of gold surrounded the dull-eyed boy and even as Luche had begged for Lyre to come back, had struggled against the hands of his father the Lyre had faded until all that was left was single turquoise bead.

When Luche thinks of that moment all he can remember is the fierce need to have his cousin back, to not lose one of his family members to something as simple of the curse that binds them together. When he looks back, Luche cannot tell you when he lost himself, it could have been when his aunt clutched Lyre’s bead to her chest and screamed like a woman struck through the heart. It could have been when he fell to his knees let out a blood curling scream of his own. Grief thick in the air around them as they mourned yet another lost to the Storm, to the possibilities they have been forced to See. 

Luche had lost himself after that, had let himself wandering into the Storm. He had looked for ways things might have been different, ways that he might have been able to guide Lyre back. Luche found those fragments of futures that had forsaken him, he found them and yet still in every possibility he saw Lyre always died. Whether by sword, gun, spear, or Sight, Lyre died and Luche’s Auger was left without a vital member of it.

His father finds him, and Luche does not recognize his face.

“Come,” says the specter of a man that Luche knows as his father. Yet the furrowed brow, the glazed over brown eyes and tousled brown hair that matches Luche’s own is unfamiliar. Luche knows this man only through visions of what could come and his father knows this. 

“Come,” Max says again and offers his son a hand, “Your mother misses you.”

Around them, the paths shift and change like shattering glass and Luche blinks open his dead gaze to stare at the light in his fathers eyes. Around them, Max and Sara Lazarus die in a hundred different ways, sometimes Luche dies with them, other times he dies alone.

Mostly Luche dies in fire. 

Luche looks at his father, past the chest riddled with bullet holes and stab wounds, marks of deaths Max hasn’t died yet, and Luche sees someone alive.

Am I supposed to be alive? He thinks even as he takes his fathers hand. I don’t think I am. 

* * *

As he follows his fathers specter back to the present; to the straight path they are on, Luche feels guilty. He thinks that he should have lost himself with his cousin, that at least then Lyre would have company in the Storm. Would it matter that his parents would miss him? Would it matter that he would be leaving behind his Auger? Luche doesn’t think so, he thinks that they would understand, that they would let Luche go.

But Luche’s father, gifted with the Sight as he is, is as stubborn as an anak, and Luche follows him back despite the part of him that whispers he’s betraying Lyre.

Luche comes back to himself. He comes back to the scent of his mother making stew in deadly silence, she would usually be humming a song from the Mainland and Luche can’t help but wonder how long he has been gone. His father sits next to him, muttering under his breath and scribbling futures into an open notebook. Luche thinks he should be glad to be back, to be whole and sane. Yet there is a heavy grief on his shoulders, and when he looks at his parents he cannot help but See where paths diverge.

It would be easy, Luche thinks with the foolishness of youth, to go back. To get lost in the Storm. To find Lyre again. His father’s head snaps up and the man glares at Luche.

“Don’t,” Max Lazarus warns his son,“I will not drag you back out.”

A knife clatters against the counter top and Sara spins on her heel to look at Luche, her hands and lips trembling as she looks at the son she bore. As she sees the light in his eyes once again.

“Luche,” she says her sons name like a prayer, “Luche, Luche, Luche, you’re back. Oh Luche.” She’s pulling Luche out of his chair in three steps and wrapping her arms around him like he might leave again. “Please,” Sara begs, “Please never do that again.”

Luche cannot promise that.

He agrees to it anyway.

If his mother senses the lie, she doesn’t comment on it.

It is after that that Luche refuses to See, he attempts to box his sight into a shallow room in his mind. To leave it in a place where it can fester and do no harm to those he loves. Luche thinks of Lyre’s mother and her grief wracked scream as her son faded in front of her eyes and Luche promises never to put his family through that again. He will not let himself go mad, he will not let himself enter the Storm again.

Truth be told, Clan Lazarus has a reputation of being mad.

Truth be told, Luche, second in command of the Kingsglaive is as mad as the rest of them.

* * *

Clan Lazarus is long used to tragedy. They have married it, have fed it their bones and their souls. They have danced with tragedy under a canopy of stars and called it lover. Clan Lazarus knows tragedy, Luche himself thinks -in his more poetic moments- that it's been bred into them, that the crimson they bleed is not only blood but the tears of all of their ancestors who wept for their children and the future they could never have.

Clan Lazarus is a tragedy yes, and that is perhaps why they often find themselves in predicaments. Perhaps, Luche thinks as he claws his way to wakefulness, he should have gone to the Gathering this year. Perhaps then he would have found a way out of the predicament he is currently in. Luche doesn't think so, Imperial forces had been encroaching on the border that seperates Furia and Khara land. It was only a matter of time before Luche and his Auger got caught.

Yet Luche's Auger is at the Gathering, and Luche is alone when he wakes.

Luche blinks at the ceiling of the airship he's been carried away from his home in and all he can think is:

'Is this how I die?' The Sight tells him no, that he burns away as he always does, but Luche isn't sure whether or not he wants to believe it. It is winter, after all, and the Sight is always finicky in winter. It is easier to get lost in the future, easier to leave their bodies and go wandering.

Luche looks at the metal ceiling above him, and lets his Sight wander.

**Author's Note:**

> some notes!  
> an Auger is a group of Lazarus


End file.
